“ ‘Do you want to die?!’ seven-year-old Samuel asks his stressed-out single mother, Amelia. She wonders if his question is a threat or a warning.” — Sundance Film Festival 2014

Is that cute little boy disturbed, or can he perceive realms we can’t see? Will his mother come back from the brink of sanity after a near-fatal crash? And what on earth is a Babadook?! These are but a few of the many questions posed by this critically-acclaimed Sundance 2014 horror brainbomb that unfolds like a twisted insomniacs’ tea party — one with Mommy Dearest, Freddy Krueger and The Omen’s Damian as guests of honor. Boasting impressive arcs and a devastating emotional undercurrent, this Jungian fairy tale inflicts the Bogeyman myth on a widowed single mother Amelia and her cute, yet disturbed six-year-old son Samuel, both led by past trauma to confront the Babadook: a Burton-esque, wolfish entity that infiltrates their dreams and, ultimately, their waking lives. Amelia’s blossoming from meek widow to possessed matriarch is a sight to behold, leaving us with the lingering question: are Amelia and Samuel are just unfortunate victims of demonic possession in contemporary Australian suburbia, or does the Babadook represent the darkness that exists within us all? Expect the answer to arrive in your nightmares, soon.
Dir. Jennifer Kent, 2014, DCP, 94 min.

Watch the trailer for “The Babadook”!

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